International airline AirAsia used mobile to increase awareness of the company and its promotions throughout Asia.

The campaign's goal was to encourage interaction and allow users to immerse themselves with the AirAsia brand. The airline partnered with Yahoo Mobile to help drive traffic to the AirAsia mobile Web site by placing banner ads on the Yahoo mobile homepage, Yahoo Mail, Yahoo Messenger and Yahoo oneSearch.

"AirAsia called upon us to help develop a campaign to drive online and mobile traffic to their mobile Web site where users can book their flights, check booking status and check out promotions," said Zealous Wiley, senior manager of public relations for Yahoo Mobile. "With this campaign, AirAsia became the first-ever company on Yahoo Mobile in Malaysia."

AirAsia wanted to encourage interaction and allow users to immerse themselves with their brand. They also wanted to increase overall awareness of the company and its flight promotions throughout Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, Indonesia, Philippines, Taiwan and Hong Kong. In particular, they wanted to evoke interest in AirAsia's "Sleepless in 3 cities" and "Beautiful island getaways" promotions.

When visitors to Yahoo Malaysia clicked on the AirAsia banner, they were rerouted to the AirAsia mobile Web site, meant to engage users with a rich mobile experience.

In just 28 days AirAsia garnered 6,091,490 impressions on mobile phones across seven markets (Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, Indonesia, Philippines, Taiwan, Hong Kong).

The campaign saw a great response from mobile users -- a total of 108,405 clicks were obtained, with a click-through rate of 1.78 percent.

"Mobile was definitely the right answer -- and the results speak for themselves. AirAsia developed ad creative specifically for the mobile user," Mr. Wiley said. "They kept the call-to-action obvious, simple, and capable of being fulfilled from a mobile device."

Average CPC on market value for this campaign was $0.56.

This isn't the first successful campaign that ran on Yahoo Mobile.

As a global sponsor of the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games, Visa wanted a multi-screen approach to promote their tie in with the event.

This included sponsorship of Yahoo's No. 1 Olympic site on the PC as well as the coverage of the Games on Yahoo Mobile, the No. 1 mobile site in the United States, according to M:Metrics.
Yahoo has worked with other brands as well.

Carmaker Porsche used mobile as part of a bigger, multichannel campaign to promote its luxury vehicles as affordable.

Porsche's "I Can" campaign targeted mobile consumers on Yahoo and encouraged consumers to click on banner ads that said, "You can own one, click to see how" and "Can you afford a Porsche? Just say "I can." The four-month-long mobile initiative outperformed Porsche's broader campaign.
Also, General Mills' Chex Mix and car manufacturer Toyota advertised on Yahoo's Fantasy Football mobile experience.

Both brands used banners on the site at http://m.yahoo.com/fantasy with a tie in to football to promote themselves.

"AirAsia's first mobile campaign was a success thanks to Yahoo's expertise," said Carmen Wong, head of marketing AirAsia Berhad. "In a short period of time, we were able to generate significant traffic to our AirAsia mobile Web site and enjoyed high click-through rates from users."